A Question of Worth
by Night's Beloved
Summary: The Wanderer sits in a tunnel as he cleans off his blade, before catching sight of an ancient idol of the Old World. One Shot


**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my rendition of the Lone Wanderer in so much as Bethesda has allowed me to create via game and my writing ability has allowed me to portray herein.**

**Author's Note: This is something of a misplaced challenge fic, given to me by Commandocucumber (whom you all should check out his Fallout stories and if you like his Mass Effect as well) that I accepted readily.**

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He listened to his own breathing in the quiet of the subway tunnels, sitting calmly with his back pressed against the wall of the crumbled ferrocrete as he carefully cleaned his sword. Speckles of blood covered the long length of steel, as well as being splattered across his midnight dark armor. The rag he used to clean the blade was long blood stained, having been used many, many times for this same grizzly task. His eyes were focused on the shine of the steel, the perfection of the blade. He often wondered of its origins, of its previous master and the life he must have led before being claimed by the visitors to their world.

It was as he was staring at the blade and at his reflection in the fine steel that he caught sight of something else. Something plastered to the wall behind him. With a frown, he slowly looked over his shoulder at the object that sat perfectly still as it had for centuries. Frayed at the edges with small rips throughout the thick paper it was made of. He wondered if the poster had always been that yellowish color or if time had simply taken its long and steady toll upon what had once been an image of something that would have been considered heroic. He shifted around on the ground to more fully face the poster now. It prominently displayed a man in a red outfit with what at first glance appeared to be a over turned fish bowl on his head while his right hand held up a pistol of a 'space-age' appearance. For a moment a smile turned upwards on his normally cold and blank features. He wondered for a moment if the men that had designed the weapon knew how close their design came to the real space article!

Perched upon the man's shoulder was a screeching monkey in similar attire, and branded to their right side in the paper it read, 'Thursdays at 8:00PM!' and the man could not help but wonder if the excitement for the advertisement was the reality of those poor sods that had at one time watched it. That thought brought on a long since buried plethora of speculations as to just what the past was like. What had the American way of life really been like? Had it truly been as he'd been taught in the Vault? Were Peace, Justice, and the American Way been the true driving forces behind the country in whose ruins he now wandered?

Or was it just this?

Build up and icon worship of fictional characters meant to garner a profit and inspire that wholesome American 'Feel Good' feeling?

... Or was it more than that? Was it something inspiring? Or was it exactly that? Exactly how President Eden's broadcasts used to make him feel... before he discovered, and horribly so, the awful truth of the Enclave. How often had he listened to the Enclave station hoping that this force of good would ride out and take back the Wasteland and make it 'the Greatest Nation to have ever existed' again?

He gently touched his fingertips to the poster and slowly ran them down along the face of this Captain Cosmos. For all the worship this man likely received... he hadn't saved anyone, had he? The actor himself had likely died just the same as everyone else, curled up and screaming before being flash fried in a sudden burning hot explosion. Or maybe he'd been lucky enough to escape death only to become a ghoul?

_Or maybe he'd been a member of the Enclave and escaped with them._

The dark whisper in the back of his mind scratched along his sensibilities and in an unconscious movement, his fingers clawed at the poster. The ancient paper crumbled beneath his grip and floated down to the ground in the slow fall he'd once witnessed a feather fall from the birds that often circled Megaton. He stared at the bits of paper which were becoming like dust in his hand as he slowly swayed his fingers to remove the remnants from the black covering of his non-functional Chinese Stealth Suit. The Wanderer slowly breathed a soft exhale of air through his nose, trying to blow out the anger that threatened to grip him.

"What good were you in the end?" he whispered softly in the dark tunnel and for a long moment he wondered if it was the man in the poster he was speaking to, or if those words were to someone a little closer. A little more tangible.

He wondered if those half-murmured words were to himself.


End file.
